Lossless Streaming Service TIDAL Launches Family Plan

TIDAL has been around for some time now, since before Jay-Z and his money rolled in and purchased the service earlier this year. While TIDAL was unique in that it offered lossless music – that being a bit-rate of 1411 kbps versus the 256kbps of Spotify, and a like-for-like quality with CDs – without much hassle, it’s been struggling to catch up to the competition. One area where TIDAL still struggles is that the price is still considered to be too high for a lot of users, despite the addition of a regular $10 a month “High” offering as well as the “HiFi” offering at $20 a month. To curb this a little bit, TIDAL is introducing a family plan.

Spotify’s family plan has been very popular for them, and Apple Music has famously arrived with a $14.99 family plan that others will struggle to match. TIDAL is taking a different approach to things here; it’s simplifying things. To your main subscription you can add up to three people, allowing for a total of four. For each of these new subscribers, there’s a 50% discount, so a $10 subscription becomes a $5 subscription for that person. The simple approach is nice here, but what about the main account holder? They still end up paying full price, and I’m pretty sure there groups of friends and families out there larger than four that would love to take advantage of this plan.

TIDAL does also offer a student discount, those with a .edu email address will get half-off as well. TIDAL continues to steadily improve and carve out a niche for itself, and family plans are just one piece of the puzzle. As competitors like Spotify offer features like Taste Rewind and Google Play Music with their tailored radio stations, it looks like TIDAL has their work cut out for them. Lossless music is one thing, but keeping people coming back to pay $20 a month in an increasingly crowded market – one where Google now has a free service – will continue to prove difficult for TIDAL.